I tried one of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop cleanses — here's why I would never do it again

Living like a Goop gal can be difficult. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images, Sara Hendricks

Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle website, has a list of cleanses. I tried one.

It was expensive and challenging, as is the case with most things on that website.

I tried it to find out what it's like.

I was left hungry by the end.

But I will probably try some of the recipes again.

Gwyneth Paltrow, if you have not yet heard, is a person who is known for many things. Being a beautiful blonde actress is one of those things, just as "consciously uncoupling" from Chris Martin in 2014 is one of those things. She is so famous that simply by looking so amazing at the Academy Awards in 1999 entire Wikipedia page was dedicated in its honor. But, in recent years, she has perhaps become best known for her lifestyle website, called Goop.

Goop, much like Gwyneth Paltrow herself, is divisive. This website can best be described as a whiplash-inducing combination of Spartanism and absurd extravagance.

With that being said, I am not ashamed to say that I am obsessed with Gwyneth Paltrow. In fact, I must confess that I think about Gwyneth Paltrow almost constantly. I love her so much, and not only because she once said that she would "rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin."

She holds the same type of mystical allure that many of the popular girls in middle school had for me, in that I get so angry when my actual friends say mean things about her, but she doesn't know who I am and has never actually done anything for me.

My point here is that I don't really believe in a lot of what Goop pushes — including cleanses — nor do I believe in the concept of a dietary detox, but I do believe in Gwyneth Paltrow. Because of this, I willingly chose to engage in a cleanse that I found on Goop. I know. A terrible plan. Let's see how that went.

First shake down. Sara Hendricks

My breakfast was a smoothie but it wasn't exactly a hit.

Breakfast on this cleanse involved, as is customary for many diets, smoothies. This, according to the cleanse manifesto provided by a person named Dr. Junger, is because "shakes amplify the effects of a cleanse by helping to 'rest' the digestive system." That didn't seem medically sound to me, but I was on this cleanse, so I was going to give it a shot.

I chose to start off my cleanse with a chai gingerbread shake made out of almond milk, chai, whole ginger, and almond milk. It is bland and gritty, but not necessarily in a bad way. Did it taste like gingerbread? Not exactly, but I suspect that isn't really the point.

This soup was not filling. Sara Hendricks

My lunch was actually delicious.

The breakfast shake was very filling. It was so filling, in fact, that I spent the five hours or so after I consumed it feeling perfectly satiated. (I am usually the type who must feed exactly every three hours, or else I grow faint and anxious, so this was big for me.)

When hunger finally did strike, I decided to make something called a "Roasted + Clean" carrot soup, which contains carrots, olive oil, garlic, and not much else. The good news is that this soup is truly delicious. The bad news is that it was not particularly filling. I started the meal famished, and found that I was somehow even hungrier by the time I finished it.

I may have cheated by adding a snack.

This was a bad idea. Not only are Tracy Anderson workouts generally awful to do in solitude, I was (obviously) still hungry when I finished it because it was a pretty intense workout.

To cope with the empty space before dinner, I made a (possibly illegal? The cleanse guide didn't technically leave room for snacks) "Piña Chlor-ada" smoothie. It was perfectly fine, but it did not taste like the yummy alcoholic drink it was named for. Even worse, I was still hungry after I finished it.

I was home visiting my whole family, so I decided to make enough for everyone.

The recipe, surprisingly, was pretty easy — it just involved plopping a salmon filet in some coconut milk and lime juice on the stove and letting it cook.

My family is a tough crowd. My mom told me it looked delicious, ate some, then said it might be "even better" if I were to broil it. Little did she know that this was not an option on Dr. Junger's cleanse.

My brother ate it in silence. My sister, who is, to be quite honest, very cruel, said that it is "not the best salmon" she has ever had. My father, thankfully, will eat just about anything, and did just that in this situation.

Perhaps it was my calorie deficit or the fact that this was my tongue's first contact with real, non-liquid food all day, but I found the salmon to be delicious.

Health-wise, the detox was ... fine.

There is a lot of conflicting information out there as to whether or not "detoxing" is a viable or sustainable health plan (Gwyneth Paltrow and her consorts seem to be into it; most medical professionals say that the concept of detoxing is a myth), but this one contained just enough solid food to make me feel as though I wasn't totally starving myself under the guise of improving my health.

On a superficial level, I looked pretty good afterward, too. I didn't weigh myself, but I certainly felt a little lighter, and, as tends to happen when one eats significantly fewer calories than usual, my stomach felt flatter and my cheekbones seemed just a tiny bit sharper.

But would I do this eating plan again? Probably not, as I am still hungry. But will I implement these recipes into my daily life? I think so! They are quite delicious, and, despite being an alienating force in my family, sure to impress at least one other person in my life.

My best friend, Gwyneth Paltrow, is so smart. At least when it comes to making salmon.

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